Three-dimensional numerical simulation of vortex-induced vibration of an elastically mounted rigid circular cylinder in steady current

Vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of an elastically mounted rigid circular cylinder in steady current is investigated by solving the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations. The cylinder is allowed to vibrate only in the cross-flow direction. The aim of this study is to investigate the variation of the vortex shedding flow in the axial direction of the cylinder and to study the transition of the flow from two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) for VIV of a cylinder. Simulations are carried out for a constant mass ratio of 2, the Reynolds numbers ranging from 150 to 1000 and the reduced velocities ranging from 2 to 12. The three-dimensionality of the flow is found to be the strongest in the upper branch of the VIV response and weakest in the initial branch. The 2S and 2P vortex shedding modes are found to coexist along the cylinder span in the upper branch, leading to strong variations of the lift coefficient in the axial direction of the cylinder. The difference between the flow transition from 2D to 3D in the VIV lock-in regime and that in the wake of a stationary cylinder is identified. The transition mode B found in the wake of a stationary cylinder is also found in the wake of a vibrating cylinder. The critical Reynolds number for flow transition from 2D to 3D of a cylinder undergoing cross-flow VIV at a reduced velocity of 6 is found to be greater than that for a stationary cylinder. For a constant reduced velocity of 6, the wake flow changes from 2D to 3D as the Reynolds number is increased from 250 to 300. Some 2D numerical simulations are performed and it is found that the 2D Navier–Stokes (NS) equations are not able to predict the VIV in the turbulent flow regime, while the 2D Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations improve the results.     

Numerical study of the suppression mechanism of vortex-induced vibration by symmetric Lorentz forces

In this paper, the electro-magnetic control of vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a circular cylinder is investigated numerically based on the stream function–vorticity equations in the exponential–polar coordinates attached on the moving cylinder for Re=150. The effects of the instantaneous wake geometries and the corresponding cylinder motion on the hydrodynamic forces for one entire period of vortex shedding are discussed using a drag–lift phase diagram. The drag–lift diagram is composed of the upper and lower closed curves due to the contributions of the vortex shedding but is magnified, translated and turned under the action of the cylinder motion. The Lorentz force for controlling the vibration cylinder is classified into the field Lorentz force and the wall Lorentz force. The symmetric field Lorentz force will symmetrize the flow passing over the cylinder and decreases the lift oscillation, which, in turn, suppresses the VIV, whereas the wall Lorentz force has no effect on the lift. The cylinder vibration increases as the work performed by the lift dominates the energy transfer. Otherwise, the cylinder vibration decreases. If the net transferred energy per motion is equal to zero, the cylinder will vibrate steadily or be fixed.     

System identification of the kinematics of an oscillating cylinder using wake velocities

A classical problem in vortex-induced vibration is to know the flow field past an oscillating cylinder. In this paper we use system theory to identify the oscillatory behaviour of a circular cylinder from flow variables in the wake. We use numerical simulations (CFD) of the flow past a cylinder oscillating in the cross-flow direction at different oscillation frequencies and amplitudes to construct a transfer function that relates the displacement of the cylinder and the resulting flow field. This transfer function can then be inverted to ‘predict’ the displacement of the cylinder given the flow field (as determined by simulations or measurements). We investigate this technique in the so-called lock-in region, where the vortex shedding frequency is synchronised with the oscillation frequency of the cylinder.     

Suppression of vortex-induced vibration of a circular cylinder using suction-based flow control

In the present study, a flow control method is employed to mitigate vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a circular cylinder by using a suction flow method. The VIV of a circular cylinder was first reproduced in a wind tunnel by using a spring–mass system. The time evolution of the cylinder oscillation and the time histograms of the surface pressures of 119 taps in four sections of the circular cylinder model were measured during the wind tunnel experiments. Four steady suction flow rates were used to investigate the effectiveness of the suction control method to suppress VIV of the circular cylinder. The vibration responses, the mean and fluctuating pressure coefficients, and the resultant aerodynamic force coefficients of the circular cylinder under the suction flow control are analyzed. The measurement results indicate clearly that the steady suction flow control method exhibits excellent control effectiveness and can distinctly suppress the VIV by dramatically reducing the amplitudes of cylinder vibrations, fluctuating pressure coefficients and lift coefficients of the circular cylinder model. By comparing the test cases with different suction flow rates, it is found that there exists an optimal suction flow rate for the maximum VIV control. The cases with higher suction flow rates do not necessarily behave better than those with lower suction flow rates. With the experimental setting used in the present study, the suction flow control method is found to behave better for VIV suppression when the ratio of the suction flow velocity to the oncoming flow velocity is less than one.     

A harmonic balance technique for the reduced-order computation of vortex-induced vibration

We present a harmonic balance (HB) method to model frequency lock-in effect during vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of elastically mounted circular cylinder and a flexible riser section in a freestream uniform flow. The fluid flow and structure are coupled by a fixed-point iteration process through a frequency updating algorithm. By minimizing the structural residual in the standard least-square norm, the convergence of HB-based fixed-point algorithm is achieved for a range of reduced velocity. To begin with, the HB solver is first assessed for a periodic unsteady flow around a stationary circular cylinder. A freely vibrating circular cylinder is then adopted for the reduced-order computation of VIV at low Reynolds numbers of Re=100 and 180 with one- and two-degrees-of-freedom. The coupled VIV dynamics and the frequency lock-in phenomenon are accurately captured. The results show that the HB solver is able to predict the amplitude of vibration, frequency and forces comparable to its time domain counterpart, while providing a significant reduction with regard to overall computational cost. The proposed new scheme is then demonstrated for a fully-coupled three dimensional (3D) analysis of a linear-elastic riser section undergoing vortex-induced vibration in the lock-in range. The results reveal the 3D effects through isosurfaces of streamwise vorticity blobs distributed over the span of flexible riser section. In comparison to time domain results, the 3D flow-structure interactions are accurately predicted while providing a similar speed up rate that of 2D simulations. This further corroborates that the HB solver can be extended to 3D flow-structure dynamics without compromising efficiency and accuracy.     

微细三角柱流固耦合动态特性的三维数值研究

在三维双向流固耦合计算基础上使用动网格方法,通过求解不可压缩粘性流体的N-S方程,数值研究了低速流速下(2.5m/s~15m/s)气体绕流微细三角钝体的耦合动态特性及涡激振动特性,得到了运动微细三角柱的升力系数、涡脱频率和振动振幅。观测到了微细三角柱的"锁振"和"拍"现象。接着计算了相同流场条件下的相同尺寸二维三角柱双向流固耦合涡激振动,并将结果与文献及本文中三维模型进行对比发现,三维模型的升力系数的平均幅值、涡脱频率和斯特劳哈尔数较之本文及文献中的二维数值模型较小。     

The interaction of a gravity current with a circular cylinder mounted above a wall: Effect of the gap size

The flow of a gravity current past a circular cylinder mounted above a bottom wall is studied by means of two-dimensional Navier–Stokes simulations. The investigation focuses on the effects of the gap size on the forces acting on the cylinder. The interaction of the current with the cylinder can be divided into an impact, a transient, and a quasisteady stage. During the impact stage, the gravity current meets the cylinder, and the drag increases towards a maximum, while the lift undergoes a drastic fluctuation which increases noticeably with the gap size. During the quasisteady stage, the flow past the cylinder resembles that observed in constant-density boundary layer flows past cylinders: Karman vortex shedding is observed for sufficiently large gap sizes, while a vorticity cancellation mechanism is responsible for the suppression of vortex shedding at small gap sizes. On the other hand, interesting differences that distinguish the gravity current case from the constant-density case are the presence in the gravity current flow of a component of the mean quasisteady lift due to buoyancy, and another component from the deflection of the wake towards the wall by the constriction of the dense fluid flow downstream of the cylinder, as well as the cancellation of vortex shedding for all gap sizes when the ratio of the channel depth to lock height is decreased from 5 to 1.     

Numerical simulation of vortex-induced vibration of a circular cylinder at low mass-damping using RANS code

Fundamental research on vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a circular cylinder is still needed to build more rational VIV analysis tools for slender marine structures. Numerical results are presented for the response of an elastically mounted rigid cylinder at low mass damping constrained to oscillate transversely to a free stream. A two-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) code equipped with the SST k−ω turbulence model is applied for the numerical calculations. The numerical results are compared in detail with recent experimental and computational work. The Reynolds-averaging procedure erases the random disturbances in the vortex shedding process, so that the comparison between experimental data and the numerical results obtained by RANS codes may reveal some random characteristics of the VIV response. How random disturbance affects the observation in the experiments is discussed in this paper and the issues influencing the appearance of the upper branch in experiments are especially investigated. The absence of the upper branch in RANS simulations is explained in depth on account of discrepancies, which exist between experiments and RANS simulations. In addition, the formation of the 2P vortex shedding mode and its transition through the lock-in region are well reproduced in this investigation.     

NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE FLOW PAST A CYLINDER EXCITED TRANSVERSELY TO THE INCIDENT STREAM. PART 1: LOCK-IN ZONE,HYDRODYNAMIC FORCES AND WAKE GEOMETRY

The numerical study of the flow past a circular cylinder forced to oscillate transversely to the incident stream is presented herein, at a fixed Reynolds number equal to 106. The finite element technique was favoured for the solution of the Navier–Stokes equations, in the formulation where the stream function and the vorticity are the field variables. The cylinder oscillation frequency ranged between 0·80 and 1·20 of the natural vortex-shedding frequency, and the oscillation amplitude extended up to 50% of the cylinder diameter. Since the resolution of the characteristics of synchronized wakes is the focus of the study, the first task is the determination of the boundary of the lock-in region. The computation revealed that, when the cylinder oscillation frequency exceeds the frequency of the natural shedding of vortices, the flow is not absolutely periodic at subsequent cycles but a quasiperiodic flow pattern occurs, which creates difficulty in the determination of the lock-in boundary. The time histories of the drag and lift forces for various oscillation parameters are presented, while the vorticity contours were favoured for the numerical flow visualization. The hydrodynamic forces, the phase angle between the lift force and the cylinder displacement, and the parameters of the wake geometry when steady state was reached, are presented in cumulative diagrams. These diagrams indicate the effect of the oscillation parameters on the hydrodynamic forces and on the wake geometry.     

Flow control using bifrequency motion

We used a second-order approximation for the periodic lift coefficient of a circular cylinder under monofrequency and bifrequency cross-flow motions. Two lock-in modes exist under monofrequency fundamental (i.e., near the Strouhal number) motion. In the first mode, the work is done by the flow on the cylinder, whereas in the second mode the work is done by the cylinder on the flow. Under monofrequency superharmonic (i.e., near three times the Strouhal number) motion, the work is always done on the flow. We then replaced the monofrequency motions by a bifrequency one, consisting of a fundamental term combined with a small-magnitude superharmonic term. We examined the effect of the magnitude and phase of the superharmonic motion term on the two modes of lock-in which we obtained when only the fundamental motion term is applied, considering two different frequencies that belonged to the two lock-in modes. Under the bifrequency motion, the work can be done on the flow or on the cylinder. This can be controlled using the superharmonic motion term, even when its magnitude is 5% of magnitude of the fundamental motion term. Other flow variables, such as the magnification of the lift, can be remarkably altered through the added superharmonic motion term. The phase of the third superharmonic lift-coefficient component relative to the fundamental one is the most responsive variable to the phase of the superharmonic motion component relative to the fundamental one.     

Free v/s forced vibrations of a cylinder at low Re

Free vibrations of a circular cylinder of low non-dimensional mass are investigated at low Reynolds numbers. Computations are carried out for 5% blockage. Lock-in is observed for a range of Re and is accompanied with hysteresis at both lower as well as higher Re ends of the synchronisation/lock-in region. It is well known that the lock-in regime for free vibrations depends on the non-dimensional mass of the oscillator. The results from the present computations are compared with the data for forced vibrations from Koopmann (Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 28, 501–512, 1967) on a Y _max/D vs. f* plot, where Y _max is the maximum oscillation amplitude and f* is the ratio of cylinder vibration frequency to the vortex shedding frequency for a stationary cylinder. Good agreement is observed for the critical amplitude needed for onset of synchronisation between the forced and free vibrations. The results from the free vibrations are compared to the predictions from the linear oscillator model by assuming that the forces on the cylinder are unaffected as a result of vibrations. It is found that, for low mass oscillators, the modification of vortex shedding frequency and lift coefficient due to cylinder oscillations leads to the enhancement of the lock-in regime.     

Numerical study on the suppression of the vortex-induced vibration of an elastically mounted cylinder by a traveling wave wall

In the present paper, the commercial CFD code “Fluent” was employed to perform 2-D simulations of an entire process that included the flow around a fixed circular cylinder, the oscillating cylinder (vortex-induced vibration, VIV) and the oscillating cylinder subjected to shape control by a traveling wave wall (TWW) method. The study mainly focused on using the TWW control method to suppress the VIV of an elastically supported circular cylinder with two degrees of freedom at a low Reynolds number of 200. The cross flow (CF) and the inline flow (IL) displacements, the centroid motion trajectories and the lift and drag forces of the cylinder that changed with the frequency ratios were analyzed in detail. The results indicate that a series of small-scale vortices will be formed in the troughs of the traveling wave located on the rear part of the circular cylinder; these vortices can effectively control the flow separation from the cylinder surface, eliminate the oscillating wake and suppress the VIV of the cylinder. A TWW starting at the initial time or at some time halfway through the time interval can significantly suppress the CF and IL vibrations of the cylinder and can remarkably decrease the fluctuations of the lift coefficients and the average values of the drag coefficients; however, it will simultaneously dramatically increase the fluctuations of the drag coefficients.     

利用O型环抑制圆柱绕法流涡脱落的数值研究

圆柱绕流涡脱落诱发较大的振动和声,如何有效地抑制值得关注.利用大涡模拟技术求解了Navier-Stokes方程,得到了涡脱落频率,升力脉动幅值及平均阻力系数.计算表明二维模拟不能体现流动基本特征,三维计算与实验吻合较好.为了抑制涡脱落,在直径为D的圆柱表面装入间距为1D,直径为0.0167D的O型环.通过升力、速度谱分析以及柱向横截面流场分析可知,在光滑圆柱外表面加入O型环能诱发流体边界层分离,有效地抑制涡脱落现象,升力脉动和观测点速度脉动幅值几乎完全消失,阻力系数也略微降低,适合在实际工程中采用.     

Two-degree-of-freedom vortex induced vibration of low-mass horizontal circular cylinder near a free surface at low Reynolds number

Two-degree-of-freedom vortex induced vibration (VIV) of a low-mass zero-damping circular cylinder horizontally placed near a free surface at Re = 100 was numerically studied with an adaptive Cartesian cut-cell/level-set method. Two Froude numbers and various normalized submergence depths were considered. The results reveal that the Froude number affects the critical normalized submergence depth and possible physical mechanisms are proposed. The in-line vibration amplitude cannot be neglected. Proximity to a free surface strengthens and suppresses the VIV for low and high Froude numbers, respectively; increases the occurrence of amplitude modulation; and in general enhances the magnitude of the time-averaged lift coefficient, which is always negative. The phase lag of the transverse displacement behind the lift coefficient jumps at some reduced velocity, which strongly depends on the Froude number and normalized submergence depth. Regular trajectories exist only in cases with a small vibration amplitude or a large normalized submergence depth. The vortex structures in any case with large transverse amplitude basically originate from the alternative vortex shedding with the negative vortex weaker than the positive one. For the higher Froude number, an extra free surface positive vortex interacts with the vortices from the cylinder surface. The vibration frequency deviates from the natural structure frequency in fluids in the large-amplitude regime.     

Global aerodynamic instability of twin cylinders in cross flow

This paper comprises an in-depth physical discussion of the flow-induced vibration of two circular cylinders in view of the time-mean lift force on stationary cylinders and interaction mechanisms. The gap-spacing ratio T/D is varied from 0.1 to 5 and the attack angle α from 0° to 180° where T is the gap width between the cylinders and D is the diameter of a cylinder. Mechanisms of interaction between two cylinders are discussed based on time-mean lift, fluctuating lift, flow structures and flow-induced responses. The whole regime is classified into seven interaction regimes, i.e., no interaction regime; boundary layer and cylinder interaction regime; shear-layer/wake and cylinder interaction regime; shear-layer and shear-layer interaction regime; vortex and cylinder interaction regime; vortex and shear-layer interaction regime; and vortex and vortex interaction regime. Though a single non-interfering circular cylinder does not correspond to a galloping following quasi-steady galloping theory, two circular cylinders experience violent galloping vibration due to shear-layer/wake and cylinder interaction as well as boundary layer and cylinder interaction. A larger magnitude of fluctuating lift communicates to a larger amplitude vortex excitation.     

Comparison between two finite-difference schemes for computing the flow around a cylinder

Separated flow past a circular cylinder is computed from two finite-difference Navier–Stokes models. Stream functions are calculated using a successive-over-relaxation (SOR) procedure. Alternating-direction-implicil (ADI) and ‘upwind’ directional difference explicit (DDE) numerical schemes for solving the vorticity-transport equation are compared. The ‘upwind’ differencing technique produces artificial viscosity which damps the wake and suppresses vortex shedding. It is shown to be unreliable and so the ADI approach is recommended.     

The variation in the maximum loading of a circular cylinder impacted by a 2D vortex with time of impact

Direct numerical simulation is used to study the loading of a rigid, circular cylinder impacted by a 2D vortex. The vortex travels within a stream of fluid characterized by Reynolds number of 150. Vortex impact occurs at twenty-five different times within one vortex shedding cycle. Substantial variation is observed in the maximum values of the drag and lift force coefficients. This variation is due to interaction between the impinging vortex and those attached to the cylinder. As the radius of the impinging vortex is increased from one to three times the cylinder’s diameter, the variation in maximum force coefficients with time of impact decreases. The variation decreases because the larger vortex alters the flow field and vortex shedding cycle prior to impacting the cylinder. For structures impacted by a vortex similar in size, significant under-prediction of the maximum loading may occur if variation in loading with vortex impact time is not considered.     

On the study of vortex-induced vibration of a cylinder with helical strakes

While the effect of helical strakes on suppression of Vortex-Induced Vibrations (VIV) has been studied extensively, the mechanism of VIV mitigation using helical strakes is much less well documented in the literature. In the present study, a rigid circular cylinder of diameter d=80 mm attached with three-strand helical strakes of dimensions of 10d in pitch and 0.12d in height was tested in a wind tunnel. It was found that the helical strakes can reduce VIV by about 98%. Unlike the bare cylinder, which experiences lock-in over the reduced velocity in the range of 5-8.5, the straked cylinder does not show any lock-in region. In exploring the mechanism of VIV reduction by helical strakes, measurements in stationary bare and straked cylinder wakes using both a single X-probe at four different Reynolds numbers, i.e. Re=10 240, 20 430, 30 610 and 40 800, and two X-probes with variable separations in the spanwise direction at Re=20 430 were conducted. It was found that vortices shed from the straked cylinder are weakened significantly. The dominate frequency varies by about 30% over the range of x/d=10-40 in the streamwise direction while that differs by about 37.2% of the averaged peak frequency over a length of 3.125d in the spanwise direction. The latter is supported by the phase difference between the velocity signals measured at two locations separated in the spanwise direction. The correlation length of the vortex structures in the bare cylinder wake is much larger than that obtained in the straked cylinder wake. As a result, the straked cylinder wake agrees more closely with isotropy than the bare cylinder wake. Flow visualization on the plane perpendicular to the cylinder axis at Reynolds number of about 300 reveals small-scale vortices in the shear layers of the straked cylinder wake. However, these vortices do not roll up and interact with each other to form the well-organized Karman-type vortices. Flow visualization on the plane parallel to the cylinder axis shows vortex dislocation and swirling flow, which should be responsible for the variations of the peak frequency in the streamwise as well as spanwise directions.     

Experimental investigation of the flow-induced vibration of a curved cylinder in convex and concave configurations

Experiments have been conducted to investigate the two-degree-of-freedom vortex-induced vibration (VIV) response of a rigid section of a curved circular cylinder with low mass-damping ratio. Two curved configurations, a concave and a convex, were tested regarding the direction of the flow, in addition to a straight cylinder that served as reference. Amplitude and frequency responses are presented versus reduced velocity for a Reynolds number range between 750 and 15 000. Results for the curved cylinders with concave and convex configurations revealed significantly lower vibration amplitudes when compared to the typical VIV response of a straight cylinder. However, the concave cylinder showed relatively higher amplitudes than the convex cylinder which were sustained beyond the typical synchronisation region. We believe this distinct behaviour between the convex and the concave configurations is related to the wake interference taking place in the lower half of the curvature due to perturbations generated in the horizontal section when it is positioned upstream. Particle-image velocimetry (PIV) measurements of the separated flow along the cylinder highlight the effect of curvature on vortex formation and excitation revealing a complex fluid–structure interaction mechanism.